The Most Obvious Tau Aggregates in Tauopathies, the Neurofibrillary Tangles, are not the Primary Cause of Harm

Altered proteins build up in the aging brain, forming solid deposits. The most prominent of them are amyloid-β, altered forms of tau, and α-synuclein, giving rise to amyloidosis, tauopathies, and synucleinopathies respectively. Some conditions mix and match: Alzheimer's disease is both an amyloidosis and a tauopathy. To further muddy the waters, any aging brain far enough along in the process to exhibit full-blown neurodegeneration will also exhibit significant levels of all of the other forms of dysfunction caused by aging. Present thinking on the roots of protein aggregation conditions is fairly diverse. Insofar as there is a consensus, the root causes are considered to include issues such as failing cellular maintenance processes, failure of the drainage of cerebrospinal fluid as a way to export waste to the rest of the body, infection by pathogens capable of generating more of these unwanted proteins, and failure of the immune system - in defending against those pathogens, in generating inflammation that causes all sorts of breakage and change in cellular behavior, and in cleaning up the waste and debris produced by other cells. Amyloid-β, altered tau, and α-synuclein are all produced in some amount by normal, healthy, young people, but clearly they do not suffer for it, and nor does it build up. Any hypothesis of disease progress must account for what changes in older individuals. An interesting point of commonality between the various forms of aggregat...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs